


waiting for a train

by thisisthefamilybusiness



Category: Hannibal (TV), Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception, Angst, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mind Games, Power Imbalance, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisthefamilybusiness/pseuds/thisisthefamilybusiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Are you dead? No.<br/>Dreaming? Maybe.<br/>No.<br/>You said you didn't care if it was a dream or not. You said you wanted forever.<br/>He gave you forever. You should be happy.<br/>Shouldn't you? </p><p>Fill for the following prompt on HannibalKink: "I just want Will stuck on the bottom level of the dream-world, and Hannibal to be with him. Hannibal, though, is a shadow (the Mal to Will's Cobb) and Will slowly goes more and more insane but holds onto the life they've "built" together."</p>
            </blockquote>





	waiting for a train

 

> **10.**

You're dead.

Or maybe you're not. Maybe it's a dream.

You check.

The top spins on.

Dream.

He puts his hands on top of yours, closes the safe, and kisses you.

Definitely a dream.

 

> **9.**

The top hasn't stopped spinning.

He tries to soothe you.

You can't stop shaking, but he kisses away your tears and tells you to trust him.

You do.

 

> **8.**

Dream.

No. Not a dream.

But the top is spinning. Has to be a dream.

He cooks you a meal, all elaborate and elegant and high artful cuisine with French names you can't pronounce. He always was a man of excess, wasn't he.

You kiss him this time.

You decide you don't care if it's a dream or not.

You make love then, after dinner, and he's steady and unyielding, and he tells you, _I am your rock_ , but your moorings are sand, and the words sound wrong as they fall from his tongue, like they belonged to some else. Stolen words, maybe, for a stolen man in a stolen world.

He tells you a riddle.

(It haunts you.)

 

> **7.**

Are you dead?

No.

Dreaming?

Maybe.

No.

You said you didn't care if it was a dream or not.

You said you wanted forever.

He gave you forever.

You should be happy.

Shouldn't you?

(You're waiting for a train.)

 

> **6.**

The top isn't spinning.

You watched him do it.

Never touch anyone else's totem. The cardinal rule. The most important rule.

 _Trust me_ , he said. _Do you not want to be with me? Please, Will. Stay with me._

His fingers reach out, into the safe, and he stills the spinning top, and for a moment, the world lurches around you, and you feel overheated, sick, as though your brain is swollen and you can't think through the haze of a high-grade fever.

He presses a hand to your forehead, frowns in concern, and takes you to bed, puts a blanket over your shaking shoulders. He feeds you hot soup and he tells you that he loves you.

You aren't sure you believe him.

You aren't sure that you're not dreaming.

 

> **7.**

The world is crumbling.

Physically crumbling, not just coming unstable as you are. This is visceral. This is tangible.

He seems unaffected by the crumbling, does not notice how there are cracks and fault lines, visible seams at the edges of your world.

Are you dreaming?

Does it matter?

He kisses you.

It feels like dying.

 

> **6.**

You remember:

You have dogs.

Had dogs.

Don't have dogs here, for some reason. He didn't like the dogs; maybe that's why. He tolerated their presence only for you.

You stare at a building collapsing in the distance.

You think about dying and its similarity to dreaming.

 

> **5.**

The top, when you try to spin it, only spins once or twice before it topples back on to the table.

He locks it away for you.

_You do not wish to know the truth, Will._

_Why not?_

_Because the truth is not here, with me, in this world we have created._

He kisses you.

You think you may be dead after all.

(You are waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away.)

 

> **4.**

You find it hard to think straight anymore.

He says you fixated on the top, so he took it away.

_You are not dreaming, Will._

But there is a bitterness in his voice that makes you think otherwise.

He offers to show you his totem as a test: the small silver locket his mother gave him, a photo inside that only he knows.

His elegant solution for keeping track of reality.

He tells you that it's the right photo.

You aren't listening.

When you look at him again, you think you can see the sallowness of the dead in his maroon eyes.

 

> **3.**

You are dreaming.

Or so you tell yourself. You aren't sure about it anymore.

You aren't sure of much anymore.

Other than that you can't stay with him like this much longer.

 

> **2.**

If you die in this limbo, you will wake up, spend your life in a coma, dreamless sleep, eternal blackness.

And if this is reality—

Then you will die.

But at least you will know.

You stand on the windowsill.

And you call for him.

(You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure.)

 

> **1.**

_Will, what are you doing there?_

He is begging.

Or at least as close to begging as he will ever come, you muse.

_Will, do not do this._

He gave you a chance for forever. He gave you happiness, family, love.

He taught you about dreaming and extraction and sex and love and what it is to let someone past your mental fortresses.

He gave you everything.

And yet in reality he gave you nothing.

This is a dream.

This must be a dream.

You hold your hand out.

_No. Do not do this, Will. Please. Trust me. This is real._

You shake your head.

_Let me be your paddle, Will, let me be your anchor. Do not do this._

The top in your mind spins on even as the one mere footsteps away lies still.

(But it doesn't matter.)

_No. Trust me, Hannibal._

(How can it not matter?)

_Will._

You shake your head.

And you ask him to take a leap of faith.

 

> **0.**

(Because you will be together with the one you love.)


End file.
